How to create a Telegram channel

People use Telegram not only for communicating with each other but also for the things social media are popular. The platform gives you the possibility to be in touch with important news. And it's also about a new content channel where one may find a good source of information.

If you want to jump straight to the action, click here.

Why and what are Telegram channels

Telegram has its way of content distribution. On websites, people see pages that they can go to and see the content. On social media, there are profiles that work the same way as website pages. However, a user can follow a page and see the notifications whenever new content comes up. Such a good way to not miss something, right?

You own your feed

Social media tell you what content you should see, except those where you see only your followings' content. The same way Telegram works. There are no recommendations of what "pages" you should follow or what posts to read. Instead, you assemble your "feed". Though there's no feed, a home screen(page) where all your communications, groups, and pages.

One can sort them by categories, importance, or some other factor and put channels on various folders. If you're tired of notifications, you can mute some groups and channels. Hence, you'll be notified only when some important channel publishes something.

Channels content

There are various content people share there. If you're in doubt about what to share, you may start with writing your thoughts on something, it may be specific to some topic or it can be a different post every time.

People share GIFs, memes, videos, images, short texts like quotes, ideas, news, and long-read content. It depends on what you're up to, you'll find readers anyway.

What to create: a channel or a group?

In channels, only administrators share the content. A channel owner can add more admins with various access rights, so some can publish, some can't remove posts, and so on.

In groups, its members can publish messages. Group administrators define what type of content the members are allowed to share. The admins can add bots to a group to better(and simpler) manage it. For example, to remove spam or do some analytics(this is also applicable to a channel).

If you don't know what to create - a channel or a group, understand if you're going to engage with an audience. There may be a channel and a group. The group is linked to the channel, hence your subscribers can comment on every post. Learn more about Telegram groups.

Creating a channel

So, the actionable advice! To create a Telegram channel you need the app itself. I presume you have it already. Then:

1. Menu -> New channel
2. Pick a channel name. Let it be concise so other people can understand what the channel is about even not clicking on it.
3. Pick if it's a public or private channel. Then, how your link would look like.
4. Add your first members. Pick a friend or skip the step.
5. Press "Create" and you're set!

A few details on the process though.

Concise channel name

It's short yet comprehensive. Why does it matter? We all saw channels with weird names. They are brands or did a difficult job at promotion though. You want your channel to be found on the Telegram search, at least. Then, people see a list of search results and skim over the bunch of channels. Help them click on you. Of course, they can visit it and read the content, but it's not always the case.

The second thing why naming matters is that it's easier to find the channels that have relevant keywords in the name(or, in a channel description). If a channel is about programming, but its name is "K8 Fox Fish", there's no way people can find it. As for now, Telegram doesn't search inside channels posts. Maybe it'll change in the future.

Public or private channel

As names suggest, public channels are opened to all Telegram users and to the search engines. For private channels, you should invite members manually.

Public channels have 2 main benefits. Anyone can find it and join. These people can share the content with their friends and they can join too. The 2nd important thing is that such channels appear in t.me domain, as well as the channel's posts. It means that some people can even find a public channel on Google. Oftentimes, if a public channel is on various Telegram catalogs, it's even simpler to google it because your channel will be on many domains, not only t.me.

How to create a telegram channel on Android

To create a channel on Android: open Telegram app, click on the blue icon in the bottom right, choose "New channel", select its name, link and a description.

What's next

Channel promotion

You'll want to promote your channel. For this, add it to all possible Telegram catalogs. Find relevant channels, contact them and place your post there and the other channel's post in your channel(cross-promotion).

There are other ways like placing ads and writing about your channel on the Interner but they're not necessarily be working for you. Ads are great to test the audience's interest, but it's not a good way to gain followers. Why? The traffic is spiked, Today you got money and spend it on ads to get 30 new subscribers. Tomorrow they're gone. If you don't have a marketing budget(and even if you do), there are better ways to make your channel more recognizable to subscribe.

Writing valuable content

Many forget about this because they spend time putting as many ads as possible to attract followers or some other not productive things.

People won't subscribe if there's no benefit for them, right? If one makes a giveaway and asks to subscribe and like, it's worth it because the subscriber gets a benefit(if she does though). Another approach is to write good content, so people subscribe because they like to read it. Or, they like it and they love discussing it in the comments. Make a great community, give them value and see how do you grow.

Monitor channel statistics

Telegram channels are like usual websites: they need to have analytics and be monitored to understand what(when) people like and what they don't. The default Telegram analytics is available on a channel that has 1000 subscribers. Otherwise, you may take a look at other solutions, they do a good job too.

Monitor your engagement rate, so you can understand how many people from the general amount of subscribers read the content. If it's low, say, 20%, it means only the 5th part of your channel is reading your publications. Well, sometimes it's not so bad, if a channel is big, you still get a lot of impressions. But the general idea is this: somehow many people become not interested in your content, or, their initial intent was wrong(they subscribed but they don't read it anymore, they're using Facebook).